


This is the letter I'd never write

by astoryaboutwar



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dark Stiles, M/M, Magic Stiles, Non-Linear Narrative, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-27
Updated: 2014-07-27
Packaged: 2018-02-10 15:58:18
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2031126
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/astoryaboutwar/pseuds/astoryaboutwar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All gifts come at a price. Magic is not a blessing. </p><p>(Note: This is an unfinished work, and will likely remain so.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	This is the letter I'd never write

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this ages ago, back when I was really into the Teen Wolf fandom. I never got around to finishing it, which is a shame, because I really like this - I'm holding out hope that inspiration will hit me again. As things stand, this is probably the most complete it'll ever be, sorry! 
> 
> This is written before Season 3 aired, and I've not caught up on watching it, so you won't find any references to that. (Also Stalia is _not a thing_ , I refuse to believe that tripe.)

 

Sometimes, Stiles forgets to breathe.

It's a choking, crushing feeling that threatens to overwhelm him - when he thinks he smells his mum's perfume; when his dad turns away from him in increasing disappointment; when he sits bruised and battered in his room, thumbing the call button on his phone, finger hovering Scott's contact ID.

This is what he does to get over this: he doesn't. He takes that ball that's lodged in his throat, shoves it deep inside him, hides it in the shadow of his heart and his lungs, forcing himself to take breaths, _one, two_ , _that's right, don't forget to exhale, that's it_.

It's like living in his personal (he won't say _hell_ , because he knows, he gets it, things could always be worse) purgatory, his very own livewire balancing act for a circus of one.

He goes to school, saves lives, sits on a bench during practice. That's him, alright, good 'ol Stiles, always the bridesmaid - that's not the right image here, but you know what he's trying to get at.

He inhales. _One_. Exhales. _Two_. It's the metronome of his breath to the rhythm of his heart, keeping time for the something he doesn't know yet, something more that _has_ to come his way. His life can't have been meant for just this. It's a _phase_ , Miss Morell tells him. It gets better. He knows this, he's intelligent, his fucking aptitude scores are off the charts, okay? Stiles doesn't need the condescension, the assurances of mere teenage angst, of a _'period of change'_.

Stiles doesn't need someone to tell him that this is nothing, to belittle his problems and make it seem like all he's got on his shoulders is a tiny plastic store-bought globe, put there out of his own choosing.

It's three in the morning, pushing four. He's got to be up in four hours or so. There are bruises on him, mauve ones shaped like fingers low on his hips, another fading to yellow on his neck. Derek put them there.

Stiles pushes away from his desk, nudges his laptop shut. He should get to bed.

 

 

_____

 

 

  

This is how it starts.

Well. Stiles would have a better beginning for that, but he's not really much of a storyteller. He's more of a researcher, fighting his wars with knowledge and hard-won information; he's not the sort to expect to get into an actual battle and _survive_. But that - that's not the point, is it?

No one wants to hear the story of a lonely boy with his army of books.

The story starts here. Really, Stiles promises.

 

 

_____

 

 

 

“I love you,” he says.

Derek’s face is shuttered, withdrawn. The tendons of his neck where Stiles’s hand rests have lost their pliancy, stiffened with tension now.

Stiles swallows the ball of bitter emotions that wells low in his throat, because he’d known all along, and really, he thinks, he must be a complete idiot because he’d known and still rushed headfirst into this.

“It’s okay,” he continues. “I never expected you to - yeah. It’s fine.”

It’s nearing seven in the evening; the shadows are long. He can’t see Derek’s face.

It’s fine, though. It’s okay. He always is, anyway - he doesn’t think he remembers what the words really mean, but that’s alright.

That’s the number one rule: Stiles is always alright.

 

 

_____

 

 

 

But that’s not really the starting point, is it? It’s - it’s the beginning, the non-chronological contextual setting, but not where he should start.

Hey, Stiles never said he wasn’t an unreliable narrator.

Sorry, everyone. Let’s try this again.

 

 

_____

 

 

 

It starts off as something easy, something simple and uncomplicated away from the craziness of everything else. Derek is unwavering in his anger, complex in a way that Stiles knows he can ignore _(everyone has their own demons to battle)_ , needy in a physical, primal way that Stiles can handle.

Their arrangement works perfectly.

It’s just sex, after all. Derek fucks him into the mattress, harsh and hard and bruising, and Stiles takes it like a champ, gives as good as he gets, bites back hard enough to leave angry-red marks on Derek that fades as soon as they’re made.

Scott doesn’t know. He doesn’t _need_ to know, and after all the shit that’s gone down, he doesn’t _deserve_ to know. Stiles still loves him like a brother, would die for him, but he’s only human, and he’s a broken and serrated one at that. Bitterness and anger make close bedfellows that nestle themselves behind loyalty and friendship in the corner of his heart.

Derek doesn’t ask questions, doesn’t pry or ask him to talk about his _feelings_.

It’s great, and then Stiles gets kidnapped by hunters.

 

_____

 

  

Stiles is a person of extremes. He hates or loves or is indifferent to; rarely is he anything in between. He loves his Dad, he’ll always love his Mum, he loves Scott, he hates Gerard Argent. It’s simple. Black or white.

Derek’s the one person he can’t quite get a handle on, intense emotions defying classification into neat pigeonholes of _love_ or _hate_ or _indifference_. It doesn’t keep him up at night, though. He’ll figure things out. He always does.

But none of that is the point here.

They’ve kept him for three days now. Stiles only knows this because of the marks he’s scratched into the wooden slats of wherever they’ve stashed him, one for each meal they bring. He’d been taken at night, had gotten his first meal about ten hours later. Three meals a day, that’s how he keeps track.

It’s funny how three days can feel like hell.

There are three kinds of pain, Stiles has found. (Three. That’s a nice, round number, isn’t it? Three, three, three. He thinks he might be losing his mind. What does it matter?)

The first is light, bearable. A stiletto’s caress slicing thin, barely-there cuts into the lines of your torso. Almost pretty, really. This pain is something you can endure at first, like when you get a tattoo and it starts off fine, hardly a pinprick, then morphs into searing pain that _burns_ the more you flinch. That’s the first kind of pain.

The second’s brutal, bruising. It’s like a fist to your face at full-speed, an elbow to your abdomen at terminal velocity. A hammer to your knee, and then to the toes of your feet. This pain is fast, swift, savage. It hurts and blooms into intolerable pain on impact, receding into dull throbbing, pulsing in time with your still-beating, rabbiting heart. So that’s the second.

The third and final one’s _agonizing,_ the kind of pain you’d give anything – a year of your life, maybe two – to make it _stop._ It’s like a knife in your chest being twisted, over and over again, or salt being continuously rubbed into open wounds. A scalpel, flaying the skin of your forearm, mangling the flesh and bits of your palms.

He’s never hated anyone more in his life than the hunters that have him now. Gerard, Harris, Jackson, they pale in frail comparison.

They want information. Where does Derek stay? How big is his pack? What is Lydia Martin’s relation to the pack? _What_ is Peter Hale?

A human breaks easily, they tell him. It’s sad, but true. Humans also sing the fastest, knives and scalpels and nails cutting through soft flesh like butter.

Stiles screams. He screams until he throat is hoarse, until his voice gives out.

But he never once sings.

 

 

_____

 

 

 

It’s his fourth day with the hunters, morning by the looks of it.

They force grey gruel down his throat and splash him with a bucket of water. _Don’t want you dying yet,_ one of them sneers.

Stiles can’t walk, can’t stand, can’t feel anything but _pain._ He briefly wonders if this is how Derek feels all the time, this translated to jagged emotions bottled up inside. They drag him back to the abattoir; strap him down to a table they’ve gotten from somewhere.

The hunter that’d sneered at him snaps on surgical gloves, _snap, snap,_ they go on, the sound a sharp crack that ricochets.

 _Ricochet,_ Stiles thinks. _Guns. Dad. Home._

“Come on, boy, let’s see what we can get out of you today.”

 

 

_____

 

 

Day five now. (Or six, or seven, he’s not sure, he doesn’t have fingernails left to mark his meals with, and he’s not awake for most of them.)

They’ve dislocated his shoulders twice, popping the joint back in so they can do it again when he continues to refuse to talk. His kneecap’s probably shattered, the toes on his left foot fractured entirely. The skin on his right forearm has been flayed, his hand and palm mangled beyond recognition. There are lines crossing all over his chest that bleed red and vicious.

For the first time in however many days he’s been here, Stiles thinks he’s going to die. No one is coming for him.

He’s back on that hateful table in the abattoir, on his back and strapped down.

The hunters are getting sick of his silence beyond screams. They’re starting on his face today, _gonna carve up that pretty face of yours, boy, let’s see how you like that._

 

_____

 

 

His mother died on a balmy Sunday afternoon in spring, when the daffodils were blooming wild across the fields and the sky was rich and blue. Daffodils, that’d been her favourite flower.

She’d insisted that they wheel her fragile body out into the hospital’s tiny park, just so she could be outdoors. _Fresh air and warm sunlight,_ she’d always told him. _That’s all you need._

Heather Marie Stilinski died at three thirty-one on a lovely May afternoon. It’s May now, too.

 

 

_____

 

 

There are three times he’s seen his father cry.

The first was when the doctors told him that his mum has cancer _(leukemia, stage 4, very advanced, untreatable, 5 months left, we’re sorry, so sorry)_. The second was after his mum’s funeral, when they’d arrived back in a dark and cold house, the lingering traces of her lilac perfume already fading, the sprig of daffodils Stiles had picked wilting in their handmade vase.

The third is when the cavalry comes and goes, Scott and Derek and everyone bursting in with roars that rattle the scalpels on the table, ripping and clawing and shredding their way to hollow victory.

His dad reaches him first, hand over his mouth. _God, oh god, Stiles, jesus, fuck, look at you, look what they_ did _to you –_

“Sorry, dad _,_ ” he chokes out. He doesn’t know why he says it, but it feels right all the same. Maybe that’s all that really matters in the end.

There are soothing hands on his face, warm and calloused and familiar. They’ll always be the hands that stuck Batman band-aids to his boo-boos, that made awful PB&J sandwiches that had his mum cringing.

It’d be a nice thing to die to, Stiles thinks. As good as fresh air and warm sunlight. Better.

“ _No_ , Stiles, stay with me, you hear? You are _not_ going to die, the ambulance is on its way, just hang on, buddy, I know you can do it.”

It’s a nice thought, hanging on. Such a pity it’s so hard to do.

 

 

_____

 

 

He’s not dead.

That’s the first thought that comes to mind when he wakes up, the sluggish effect of morphine and a drug cocktail trickling through his system. His right hand’s in a cast, and so is his left leg.

Stiles would say he hurts everywhere, but he knows what pain _truly_ feels like, and it’s not this. The heart monitor by his bed beats a steady rhythm. It helps him to focus.

His dad’s slumped in a chair by the door, asleep. It’s dark out and the hospital is hushed, so it’s probably in the twilight hours of the morning.

“Dad,” he croaks, and he immediately startles awake. He almost feels bad, but he’s sorry, so incredibly _sorry_ , he can’t stop apologizing and it’s _May,_ it’s clear skies and flowers out, it’s _May._  

“How are you feeling?” his dad asks, shifting his chair to the bedside so he can clutch Stiles’s hand.

“Like I’ve just been tortured for five days,” he jokes. It falls flats, pinches the lines around his dad’s eyes. “Too soon, huh?”

 His dad looks away. Clears his throat. “A week,” he says.

“What?”

 “They had you for a week.”

A week’s not that long, he’d once have thought. Seven days. One hundred and sixty-eight hours. What was less than two hundred hours when the average lifespan was seventy-five years? It’s an easy thing to believe, that a week amounted to nothing.

“Only?” He tries for a smile, but his lips are cracked. They sting when he widens them, the coppery taste of blood bursting like ripe fruit on his tongue.

“Don’t do that,” he dad admonishes, fishing around for a tissue.

“Don’t do what?” Stiles asks. “Smile? Come on, dad, it’s like you don’t know me. I smile all the time. It’s my default setting.”

His dad sighs, looks put-upon, slightly more like his normal self. “I know, kiddo. I know. Just don’t go ripping your lip wide open.”

Stiles tongues at his split lip before pursing them together in a bid to figure out how to smile without causing his lips further injury. His dad chuckles, leans over to ruffle at his shorn head.

It’s a nice sound, it doesn’t happen as often anymore.

His dad stands, patting the side of the bed lightly. “I’m going to go call one of the doctors, okay? Don’t run off anywhere,” he quips. He stretches before walking out, working out the kinks in his back. It’s bad, Stiles can tell. He’s been here for at least twenty-four hours, maybe pushing thirty without sleep.

Stiles tries smiling again, just for practice.

 _Smiles,_ his mum had always said, _is only one letter different from Stiles._  

It’s ironic, really. He’d be laughing if it didn’t jar his set bones and wrapped chest.

 

 

_____

 

 

Scott comes by the next day, massive Batman helium balloon in hand, Allison trailing after with a Spiderman cake. It’s a nice gesture on both their parts, and they chat for as long as Stiles can keep awake and apace.

He smiles so hard, so much so that his cheeks feel like they’ll never stop being pulled into one, a rictus of ostensible emotion with an automated mouth with programmed responses. _Yes, dude, I’m cool. I’m getting better, promise. I’m okay, I’m moving past it._

Stiles’s favourite: _I’m fine._

It’s the easiest thing to say, the easiest thing to believe. Say it with a smile and everyone’ll shake your hand, pat you on the back and wish you well; glad to see you’re recovering so quickly.

Boyd, Erica and Isaac drop by, as do Lydia and Jackson and even _Danny._ Past felons out for revenge on the sheriff’s son, that’s what he’s told is the story they’ve spun. He tells them he approves, likes the very Western slant to it.

His dad’s not with him all the time, but he’s there a lot. Stiles likes it, likes the rambling non-sequiturs of conversation that they have – that they haven’t had for a very long time.

It eases the guilt in his chest somewhat.

 

_____

 

 

The thing about Stiles is that he doesn’t get mad, he gets _even_. And maybe that’s the most clichéd line in the book, but it’s the truth nonetheless.

The hunters who’ve taken him are all dead, his dad quietly tells him one night. Torn to pieces by the pack, and it’s jarring to hear his dad say that with a venomous, satisfied bite to his words. It’s comforting, even if dissonant.

There’s something curling underneath his skin now, electric and snapping. He can feel it rolling within his bones, crackling and pulsing with licking fury. It’s a heady feeling.

Recovery is slow and arduous. They send him home after two weeks with firm instructions on what activities he can and cannot do, sit his dad and him down for a long talk on what he’ll never do again.

He’ll never regain full use of his right arm, the muscles and tendons mauled by clumsy hands on sharp scalpels. His left foot will always be slightly misshapen, the bones reset too late to return full functionality. His nails will grow back, but only in time. His left knee will always give him problems, fractured and dislocated at the angle that it was.

They send him for rounds of endless physiotherapy – walking first, climbing the stairs, swinging his arms around, flexing his fingers, curling his toes. It’s mindless, numbing, cyclical routine.

It’s fine, though. There’s an energy teasing at his fingertips, subconsciously nudging him _faster, quickly, heal._  

It’s a roll of thunderclouds, a sharp flash of lighting, the taste of ozone on your tongue before a quaking storm.

 

 

_____

 

 

Derek drops by to see him once, in between the rounds of physio and rest, slipping into Stiles’s room through his window.

He looks the same as ever – it’s a startling thing, when you measure your change by another’s and realize how far you’ve come (you’ve been _forced_ to come) in such a short span of time.

Derek will always be physically flawless, sculpted and scar-free and beautiful. Stiles’s scars will never heal, gaping maws on his chest and arm and hand that have been sutured and sealed shut to imperfection and unsightliness. It’s a strident disconnect.

There’s a fruit basket in his hand, one of those that Stiles knows they sell in the gift shop at the hospital. Still, it’s a thoughtful gesture. Derek places it on his desk, and they stare at one another for an awkward beat before Stiles breaks the silence.

“Hey, yeah, thanks for the basket,” he nods, breaking eye contact to fuss with his blankets, arranging them the way he likes around his legs.

Derek’s by his bedside in an instant to lend a hand with rearranging his duvet. It’s weird. They aren’t _friends,_ not exactly, and they have little to say to each other beyond news of the latest supernatural villain wreaking havoc in Beacon Hills. 

“How’s the pack?” Stiles asks, just to create conversation.

“Fine.” Derek’s standing by his bed, looking down at him, and the angle is hell on Stiles’s neck. “I’ve been training them hard.”

“Man,” Stiles sighs, “you’ve got to remember not to push them too far. I mean, seriously, they’re all just a bunch of misfit teenagers.”

Derek raises a sardonic eyebrow. “And you’re not?”

It’s a sudden realisation. Stiles _is_ – he’s seventeen, he’s a teenager, he’s so _young._ Most days he feels like an old soul trapped in a youthful body, weariness settling into the marrow of his bones.

“You know me,” Stiles replies, “the misfit in the band of misfits, so I don’t count.”

Derek scoffs. “How’re you feeling?” he asks.

Stiles picks at a loose feather on his duvet. “Better,” he responds at length. “I’m getting better.”

It’s not a lie.

 

 

_____

 

 

His dad sends him for more counseling. Doctor’s recommendation.

Stiles sees Miss Morell three times a week now, one-hour sessions sandwiched between school and physio and exhausted sleep.

It’s always the same thing with her: _how are you feeling, Stiles? How do you feel about what happened to you? Do you blame for father for your kidnap?_

It’s a tedious process.

It’s always the same thing with him: _I’m fine._

What was it again?

Oh, right –

Stiles is always fine.

 

 

_____

 

 

It’s months before he can drop by to pay Deaton a visit.

The vet fixes knowing eyes on him when Stiles walks in, as if he’s been expecting him.

Maybe he has.

There’s anticipation in the air, a quiet stirring in sleepy streets.

“I want to know everything about magic,” Stiles says.

Deaton inclines his head, spreads his hands.

“Take a seat, Stiles.”

He does.

 

 

_____

 

 

The first time Derek and him fuck after Stiles is kidnapped, Derek licks tender lines across the scarring striations that score his chest, presses a soft kiss to the shoulder that was dislocated and traces the edges of his misshapen left foot.

He’s slower, taking his time to stretch Stiles open, to make sure he’s well and ready before pushing in. His thrusts are languid and rolling, unhurried and designed to take Stiles apart with pleasure. 

Afterwards, he goes to the bathroom to get a clean towel, gently cleaning Stiles up. He kisses Stiles before he disappears out the window, long and warm and unrushed.

Stiles doesn’t know what to think.

This was supposed to be _easy._

 

 

_____

 

 

There are runes and spells and herbs and rituals and dates to memorise, all contained in the dusty leather-bound tomes Deaton sends him home with.

“Learn these and come to me if you have questions,” he says, “then we’ll move on to the hard-hitting stuff.”

“These are the _basics?”_ Stiles sputters. There are at least ten books in the stack, all more than three hundred pages of vellum each. Some are in archaic Latin, others in esoteric languages he’ll have to Google.

Deaton sends him a wry look. “Did you think this wouldn’t be a challenge?”

“No, I – ” Stiles begins to defend, before glancing down at the pile of books and the criss-crossing mess of scars on his hand. “I’ll get started on them tonight.”

“Good,” Deaton says, expression approving.

The energy – the _magic_ – in his blood is singing, coursing down his arm and strengthening the ailing muscles of his mangled hand.

It’s a good feeling, a promising one.

 

 

_____

 

 

Scott’s been making an intermittent appearance in his life since Stiles’s kidnap, and it’s probably a lot sadder than it is that he can’t say he wasn’t expecting it.

Still, it’s not like they never see each other, or text, or hang out on occasion. They’re meeting for lunch at the local diner; the one which Stiles swears has the best curly fries.

Scott walks in ten minutes late, goofy grin on his face telling of his recent meeting with Allison. He slides into the booth that Stiles has picked, nodding dumbly at the waitress in thanks as she comes by their table to pass him a copy of the menu.

“Hey, man,” he greets, and Stiles punches his shoulder lightly in response. “Have you ordered your –” Scott pauses, looking up from his menu to sniff the air surreptitiously.

“Dude, you smell weird. Did you get a new shampoo or something?”

Stiles jerks his head up roughly, which makes his neck crack. “What? No? What do I smell like?”

Scott leans closer, taking a bigger sniff. “I don’t know. It’s like – like smoke, or something. But not _cigarette_ smoke, kind of like the edges of a forest fire smoke? Like lightning.”

It doesn’t make much sense to Stiles, but he relaxes from where he’s tensed up in his seat, nodding. “I think my dad got a new brand of detergent, so maybe that’s what that is,” he shrugs. 

Scott sits back, bobbing his head thoughtfully. “Yeah, maybe,” he says, not sounding entirely convinced. He shakes his head, turning back to the menu. “Dude, I’m _starving,_ Allison and I were…” 

Stiles tunes him out, humming and hawing in the appropriate pauses.

 _Like lightning,_ he thinks. _Lightning._

His magic murmurs beneath his skin in response.

 

 

_____

 

 

Stiles goes back to Deaton a week later, head swimming with information. He’s gone through all the books he’d been handed in their entirety, photocopying and committing to memory and muttering under his breath.

“We’re going to get you to try something today, one of the spells,” Deaton says.

He nods. “Yeah,” he says, trying not to feel nervous. “Okay. Which one?”

Deaton pins him with a searching look. “Which one do you _think_ you should do? Ask your magic. _Feel_ it. What does it _want_ to do?”

Stiles stills, setting the stack of books he’d brought to return down on a counter. _Hurt,_ his magic whispers. _Destroy. Punish. Crush those who would dare to lay hands on us again._

“This one,” Stiles decides, yanking a book from the stack and flipping it to the right page. It’s a spell of demolition, violently wrecking the intended target to explosive shatters.

If Deaton is shocked, he gives no indication of it. He nods, disappearing into his office to retrieve what looks to be a relic of some sort, a figurine about a foot high.

“Practices all external, non-target requiring spells on this. It’s been spelled to allow the effects of whatever you cast on it work if you perform the spell successfully, but will mend itself to its original form ten seconds after.”

He sets the figurine on the ground, waving a hand to indicate that Stiles should proceed with his spell. Stiles approaches the figurine cautiously, bending to trace a circle of careful runes around it.

 _Fire, hurt, pain, force, protection,_ his fingers mark in invisible patterns on the floor. When he’s done, he steps back.

“Now,” Deaton instructs, “ _believe.”_

 Stiles takes a deep breath, closing his eyes and turning his concentration inward. _Defend,_ he commands.

The figurine explodes, shattering completely, shards hurtling in all directions. Deaton’s prepared, though – he raises a hand, and the shards hit a force field, clattering to the ground and breaking into even smaller pieces. 

Stiles counts to ten. The figurine doesn’t mend itself. He turns to Deaton nervously, biting down hard on his lower lip.

The vet has one eyebrow raised, but he doesn’t look caught out by this new development. “I thought so,” he murmurs. Looking away from the shattered relic and back to Stiles, he affixes him with a probing look. “You need an anchor.”

“What?” Stiles exclaims. “Like a werewolf anchor _anchor?”_

Deaton sends him a wry glance. “Something to that effect, yes.” He approaches the debris zone surrounding the figurine, stooping to traces a circle of runes around the ruined relic before standing and dusting his hands off. There’s a swirl of smoke, grey and light, before the figurine’s whole and repaired again. The palpable magic that had emanated from it is gone, though. It’s just a very old statue now, devoid of all its supernatural properties. 

It’s approaching five in the evening. Deaton picks the figurine up from the ground, setting it down on an examination table.

“Think about what I’ve said,” he tells Stiles. “Find an anchor.” He walks over to a cabinet, opening it to pick out several leather-bound books. “Read these and come back to see me in a week.” 

Stiles glances down at the titles being handed to him. “Folklore, Myths and Legends of Hungary?” he questions. He takes quick stock of the rest of the titles – they’re all historical accounts or bestiary-style books, encyclopaedias of information. “I’m not learning more spells?” 

Deaton sends him a sharp look. “Not until you find and anchor and learn to control your magic.”

Processing Deaton’s words, Stiles nods slowly. “But what happens if I don’t? If I _can’t?”_

Something in Deaton’s demeanour grows serious and grave. “Then you place your father – and everyone you care about – in danger. Not having an anchor because you _can’t_ find one isn’t an option, Stiles.” 

“ _Danger?”_ Stiles echoes incredulously. “But I’m not – ”

Deaton cuts him off with an abrupt shake of his head. “Your magic is too powerful, too consuming. You _need_ an anchor before it destroys you, or before you lose control of it and hurt someone else.”

Mind still reeling from this revelation, Stiles dips his head in frantic agreement. “Yeah,” he says, “yeah, I’ll look into that. Definitely. Will do.”

“I’ll see you in a week’s time, then.”

“Cool, thanks.”

He stumbles out of the vet’s office towards his jeep, dumping the books on the passenger seat when he manages to wrangle the door open.

 _Huh,_ he thinks. _So there’s that._

 

 

_____

 

 

 _Powerful_ has never been an adjective used to described Stiles. _Power’s_ never even been a word used in association with him.

To think that there’s something flowing through his veins, imbued in his essence and very nature – something destructive, potent, formidable – it’s a heady thought, one that sends susurrations of thrill through the hum of magic beneath his skin.

He lets himself back into his house, tracing runes of protection against the door frames and on window sills.

His magic stirs within the pale shell of his body, rolling and churning, strangely discontent.

 

_____

 

 

He doesn’t have time to find an anchor before the next shitstorm hits Beacon Hills. It’s the first supernatural-related fight he’s been let back in on since his kidnap.

Stiles gets a text at two in the morning from Scott, his phone buzzing angrily by his head, jostling him awake.

 _Gorgons in town,_ the text reads. _Fml. Going 2 chk perimeter in Preserve w pack. Derek says u nd to stay hm._

Stiles sends a quick _Ok_ back, bending to fish his red hoodie and put on a pair of pants before grabbing his keys and hightailing it out of his house.

 _Stay at home,_ he scoffs. It’s like Derek doesn’t know him.

There’s a growing sense of anticipation in the air, the smell of the gnashing sea before the skies grow dark.

 

_____

 

 

It’s a savage fight, blood and gore and flesh littering the forest where the ashes of a dead family sleep.

Derek roars his victory, and they pick their way through the foliage back to civilization and a town of ignorant sleeping innocents. Stiles drifts apart from the rest of the group, mind wandering. 

The battle’s won, the monsters slain. 

Except –

 _Of course_ that’s when a straggler rips through the bushes, the gorgon headed straight for Stiles.

He doesn’t have time to think.

A finger scrabbling in the dirt –

Runes for _fire, hurt, kill kill kill –_

A distant roar –

 _Anchor,_ Stiles thinks, _dad, think of dad_ –

Crackling underneath his skin –

“Stiles! _Stiles!”_

 

 

_____

 

 

Let’s pause here to make something clear: Stiles’s story does not end well.

Did you think it would?

Funny.

He used to think that too, back when werewolves were stories to be laughed at and the monsters under his bed weren’t real. When his mum was alive, and flowers stood in pretty vases on the kitchen sill, and the bottle of Jack Daniels that his dad keeps on the top shelf wasn’t half-empty.

_If you’re going through Hell, keep going._

Wise words from someone who hasn’t seen the battleground, who hasn’t clawed through pain to come out battered and torn on the other side. Trite words to pacify troubled souls from someone who hasn’t fought a war – because it is, this is a fucking _war_ , a war of attrition, and price of winning is the same as losing, their lives all forfeit to a greater good they’ll never get to savour.

 _He seems angry,_ you must be thinking.

Of course he is.

 

_____

 

  

A strange light-headedness, a vicious, raking satisfaction. _Power._ He can do anything, he’ll kill them all, he can do it. 

 _It’s about sending a message,_ he vaguely thinks.

A hand on his face now.

“Stiles, come _on_ , wake up, don’t do this to me.”

He drifts back towards the light, floating on his high. When he cracks his eyes open, the pack is standing around him in a loose circle, looks of uncertainty and worry in their eyes. And –

And _fear._

Derek’s hand comes up to cup his jaw lightly. Stiles turns his attention back to him, nodding to indicate that he’s not hurt, he’s fine. He’s lent a boosting hand when he stands, and that’s when he sees the devastation around them.

All trace of life within a twenty-yard radius has been obliterated, and the gorgon –

Stiles swallows hard, fighting back the bile that rises in his throat. “Is that – ?”

“Yes,” Derek says, ushering him in the direction of his jeep and home. “But that’s alright, it’s over. You fought well.”

Stiles catches a glimpse of Jackson, incredulity written all over his face, mouth opening to speak. Derek shoots him a hard look, one that Stiles doesn’t miss. “It’s _fine,”_ Derek repeats. 

Stiles feels drained, like vitality has been sapped straight from his veins. He could fall into bed and sleep for a century. His magic is calm now, a gentle ebbing in his blood, appeased and sated.

Looking back, he should have known what that meant.

 

_____

 

 

Stiles wakes up in Deaton’s office, blinking hard to the chase the starbursts behind his eyelids away.

“He’s awake,” he hears Derek say from the next room, walking in with his dad close behind.

“Jeez, Stiles,” his dad sighs. “Way to give your old man a heart attack.” He runs an affectionate hand through Stiles’s buzzed hair. “How are you doing?”

 “Wobbly, but okay,” he answers. “What happened?”

Deaton walks into his line of vision from where Stiles is still flat on his back. “It’s your magic,” he interjects. He tone grows disapproving. “I told you to find an anchor before doing anymore of it.” 

“Magic?” His dad exclaims. “Whoa, okay, back up. Stiles, what have you gotten yourself into _this_ time?”

Stiles begins to reply, but Deaton does it for him. “Stiles has – _is –_ magic, sheriff. It’s been dormant up until his run-in with the hunters, probably inherited from a distant ancestor. He’s been coming to me for help on how to control and harness it.” 

His dad looks dumbstruck, so Deaton presses on. “What happened tonight _cannot_ be allowed to happen again. Stiles’s power is _immense_ and extremely vengeful. Left unchecked, the consequences _will_ be disastrous. He needs an anchor to help him control that, someone to help him focus and ground his magic.”

It’s Stiles’s turn to cut in. “ _Vengeful?”_ he yelps. “What do you mean by that? Why would my magic be vengeful?”

Deaton turns to him. “Your magic presented itself under very – ” he cuts a look to his dad, “ – extenuating circumstances. The emotions you felt then, your vulnerability and mental state – they all played a big part in the way and manner in which your powers manifested. You were hurt then, so now your magic wants revenge. It’s angry.”

His dad’s rubbing his temples. “Okay, so this anchor. What is it? How do we find this person to – to _ground_ his magic? To stop it from becoming too much?”

Deaton’s gaze is a palpable weight on him. “I think Stiles should be the one to answer that question.”

Stiles startles, suddenly the sole focus of three pairs of eyes. “What? No, I – ”

The sensory recollection hits him then, punching the air out of his lungs. A calloused hand on his face, a low voice calling him back. _Derek._

He remembers trying to concentrate his belief around his dad, but he sees his mistake now – the love he has for his dad is a steady constant, a consistent hum, but whatever he feels for Derek, _that’s_ a volatile, irascible emotion. It’s something fierce and charged enough to fly in the face of his magic.

He darts a quick glance at Deaton, who simply nods at him, as if able to read his mind.

“Sheriff, a word in private?”

His dad sends him one last worried look before agreeing, following Deaton out into the main reception area. It’s just Derek and him now.

“Something you want to tell me, Stiles?”

His mouth grows dry, his heart suddenly beating out a nervous tattoo. “You heard Deaton,” he mutters, sitting up with a wince to avoid the vulnerability of lying so exposed on an examination table. Derek’s by his side in a second to help him steady his shaky body. “You’re my anchor,” he mumbles, picking at the torn fabric of his jeans.

“Mmm,” Derek hums, sidling closer to Stiles, the warmth of his body a tangible, comforting thing. “So what exactly does that entail?” 

“I don’t know,” Stiles replies, fidgeting. “You’re the werewolf, you’ve been dealing with this anchor thing longer than I have.”

Deaton, with his almost-supernatural sixth sense, returns with his dad then. “You need to keep Stiles’s magic in check. I’ve just explained to the sheriff here – Stiles’s magic isn’t – it isn’t _good_ , to put it lightly. You need to stop him from tipping the balance and falling to the forbidden arts.”

“What?” Stiles gapes. “The _forbidden arts?_ What is this, Harry Potter?”

A swift shake of Deaton’s head and a reprimanding look from his dad. “This isn’t a _joke,_ Stiles. Once you’ve gone over the edge – once you’ve gone down that path, _there is no turning back._ You need to understand this. It isn’t something you can _play_ with or skirt the brink of. As your anchor, Derek will help with this. He’ll rein you in.”

“So I shouldn’t do magic? At all?” Stiles chews his lip, frustrated.

Deaton shakes his head again. “No, you can. But you need to watch yourself when you do; _Derek_ needs to watch out for you when you do.”

The look Derek’s fixing on him is intense, the expression on his face something Stiles can’t quite decipher.

It’s not what’s at the forefront of Stiles’s mind at the moment, though.

 _We will not be chained like an animal,_ a baleful voice whispers.

Stiles shudders involuntarily, Derek stepping in close, hands coming up to rub at his arms. “I’m good,” he says automatically.

His dad eyeballs him, disbelieving. “I think that’s more than enough excitement for one day. We should head back. Thanks, Alan.”

He’s bundled into the patrol car by Derek, who says he’ll drop by soon.

The windows are rolled down a crack, the wind whistling in as they drive home.

 _We will not be chained,_ it hisses. _We will not._

 

_____

 

 

 _Start small,_ Deaton tells him. _Small uses of your magic. Learn how it feels. Get to know the rush of power, so you can control it._

It sounds easy. Stiles spends his weekends and time after school when he doesn’t have lacrosse practice in the Preserve with Derek, directing his magic at fallen logs and piles of leaves and targets they’ve set up.

 This is what he ends up doing: he scorches the arable earth to infertile dirt and a barren mimicry of the lushness of before, razing leaf piles to smoking nothingness, barely controlling the surge of power in him from blazing the forest to ashes.

 _Learn how it feels,_ Deaton had said.

Most days it feels like the tide of magic crashes through him like a seasoned conqueror learning the contours of newly discovered land, the topography of his veins marking a route to consummate victory and ruination.

It’s like fighting a war with sticks and stones; listless, fruitless pounding of fists against solid wood doors; the futility of action in the face of certain disaster.

Derek – Derek’s with him throughout, arm around his waist and body a warm, solid line of support whenever the magic takes its inevitable toll on Stiles’s body. He presses brief kisses to the nape of Stiles’s sweaty neck, bending to nose at his throat. Stiles turns into the nuzzle, catching Derek’s lips with his own.

 

This is easy, at least. Not _uncomplicated_ , but it’s simple – the sexual attraction between them isn’t something that needs to be overanalyzed or overthought. 

Maybe – 

Maybe it’s something _more,_ something stirring in the shadow of the quietest, most terrified parts of his heart, but that’s not something Stiles is ready to reach down and tentatively tug up to examine under the light of day.

He’ll leave it like this for now, hushed kisses to sheened necks beneath the canopy of a green, bleeding forest.

 

_____

 

 

His dad worries. Stiles understands – how can he not?

Deaton’s words were frightening things. _(Mustn’t tip over the edge, rein in his magic, dangerous, so dangerous.)_

Stiles – Stiles just wants to _protect_ his dad. To keep him safe, to shield him from the world and apologise for dragging him into this; this was never meant to be his fight.

“How are your – ” his dad waves his fingers in a gesture that Stiles interprets to mean _magic_ “ – practice sessions with Derek coming along?”

Stiles looks up from where he’s stirring the chilli he’s made for dinner, his power surging forward in a sudden tide, beating against the restraint of the shell of his body. He drives it back on a deep breath. 

“Good,” he answers, not looking up from where his attention is ostensibly focused on the pot. “It’s coming along pretty well.”

There’s a poignant pause, then a rustle as his dad sets the paper he’d been reading down. “That’s great to hear,” he says. “Look, Stiles – ”

Stiles looks up at him then, turning the fire on the stove off with a quick flick of his wrist.

“I just want you to know that you can talk to me about anything, okay? Anything. I don’t care that you’re magic or bi or that you run around dealing with supernatural things on a daily basis. You’re my _son,_ and you can _always_ come to me.”

There’s a ball of emotion lodged in his throat, a suspicious burning behind his eyes. He clears his throat. “Thanks, dad. You’ve been – you’ve been great with this. I’m sorry I dragged you into this mess and – yeah. Yeah. Just…thanks.”

His dad nods, and they stare at each other for an awkward beat before Stiles bustles to plate their food and his dad stands to get cutlery from the drawer, and it’s all back to the normal dinner routine in the Stilinski household.

Their conversation weighs heavily on Stiles’s mind, though, magic spitting and hissing in his gut, a venomous nest of coiled vipers.

 

 

_____

 

 

He’s getting better at it. He doesn’t have to actively, consciously force his magic down now, breaking off mid-conversation or hand pausing mid-gesture.

Derek’s relaxing a little more, less tense around him whenever he uses his power – less worried about the effects of that power on Stiles. It’s a nice change, a welcome one. They go for long walks in the Preserve, spend full moons together. It’s less of a worry now, Stiles being a fragile human. He can hold his own as ferociously and powerfully as any creature of the night.

But don’t – don’t think it’s perfect. It’s not. They fight and yell and fuck hard and fast, fingers bruising and teeth marking, demarcating and retracing territorial battle lines ceded and won with each pull and thrust of shadowed hips. Derek still growls and snaps, Stiles still rebukes and deflects. For all that’s changed, there are things about them – things _between_ them – that remain the same. 

There’s a certain foreboding, though. A hushed silence before the sharp clap of thunder, the pelting of icy rain. There’s an unquiet dissatisfaction in his blood, seeping through his veins and into his flesh like filter paper placed in ink, only that this bleeds red, red, _red._  

It’s not something Stiles shares with Derek – or his dad, for that matter. He can control the build-up of magic, it’s fine.

There are cracks on his bed frame and dead birds on his sill in mornings, pencils embedded in walls at odd hours of the day and the perpetual smell of charred wood lingering in his room. He doesn’t remember doing any of those things, burning or killing or wrecking.

It’s all fine, he’s handling it.

Stiles yanks the pencils out from the walls, plastering posters over the yawning holes bored into concrete. He takes to febreezing _everything,_ to piling things on his bedframe to obscure the slithering cracks.

He wraps the dead birds up in little Ziploc baggies, placing them in bag after plastic bag. The rustling of the plastic is loud, snapping and gnashing at his shaky fingers when he dumps them in a random skip downtown.

Stiles has got this, he’s got everything under control, no use worrying his dad and Derek. 

Trust him.

 

_____

 

 

What was it that Sartre said? 

Oh, right.

_Hell is – other people._

Alone amidst the carnage of body parts and flesh strewn about like confetti at his party of the-last-man-standing, Stiles thinks that that’s a lie.

 _It’s not,_ he thinks. _It’s in me._

 

_____

 

 

Wait. No.

We’re getting ahead of ourselves here.

Let’s go back a little, before everything – just – _before._

You’ll get it then, you’ll see why things turned out this way.

 _(It’s not your fault,_ Miss Morell says. Stiles wants to agree, he really does, but if it isn’t his fault – then _whose is it?_

_It’s his, it has to be.)_

 

_____

 

 

The hunters are back. The ones that’d taken him – their clan is _furious_ , back to exact vengeance in the form of pain and pounds of flesh taken from quivering bodies.

Stiles sleeps with Derek curled around him, panic attacks fast on the heels of anxiety and insomnia, hands shaking, leg aching. The scars that litter his body are a single neon accusation, his magic jittery and skittering, _we will rend them into two._

_You keep your peace; we will take our due._

Derek soothes him with languorous kisses, slow rolls of hips and wet, filthy kisses, their bodies warmed and pressed into bed, window shut to the horrors outside. And it works, inasmuch as anything that keeps his magic at bay works now, the ebb subsiding and purring under Derek’s hands and lips and long, solid line.

Stiles is close, _so close_ to the edge, a hair’s breadth away from a rubicon of his own design.

The weather is calm, the sky clear, clouds rolling fast and furious. Erica always said that it looked like something bad was coming, hard on the heels of the rushing clouds, and Stiles has never understood - the sky was clear, that couldn’t mean anything other than good weather.

Now, though - he thinks he knows what she means.

 

 

_____

 

 

They come for Derek.

That’s their first mistake.

Their second – and last?

They take Derek, and they _hurt_ him.

 

 

_____

 

 

His phone rings at three in the morning, the sharp vibrations jerking him from restless sleep. It’s his dad.

“Derek’s missing.” Stiles can hear muted voices in the background, the rustle of wind, the slow swish of leaves on trees. They’re outdoors. Outside. The Preserve.

“Don’t – ” 

Stiles cuts him off. “I’m on my way.” 

They can’t keep him away. They have _Derek._ And maybe Stiles can’t define what he feels for him, doesn’t know what they are or where they stand, but _they have Derek,_ and nothing else matters.

“Dad,” he continues, talking over his dad’s vociferous protests, “Don’t go into the Preserve without one of the wolves. _Don’t._ Wait for one of them, or for me to get there. Okay?”

There’s a long pause before his dad agrees. They hang up, Stiles tugging on jeans and pulling on his red hoodie, tracing runes of _protection_ and _defend_ and _safety_ into the lines on both his palms, a solitary symbol of _courage_ onto the skin above his heart. They’re all _good_ runes, runes meant to shield and save.

He ignores the punch of roiling magic settled low in his gut, churning their discontent and scraping him raw.

Stiles throws himself into his jeep, tearing out of the driveway at breakneck speed towards the edge of the Preserve. He hurtles past the skip where he dumped the dead birds, his magic lashing out and prickling goosebumps on his skin, tiny prods of _see what we can do, don’t you want that?_

It’s a litany he struggles to push aside, the two-syllable, single word he repeats over and over keeping the thrashing monster inside him subdued.

_Derek, Derek, Derek._

 

 

_____

 

 

Derek’s bound and gagged, wolfsbane ropes biting into the skin of his wrists and ankles, the wretched plant infused and stuffed into the gag in his mouth. 

Stiles wants to _destroy,_ to _flagellate_ and _eviscerate_ and _murder_ and _rip_ and _shred._

 _How dare they,_ his magic seethes, _how_ dare _they take what is ours and hurt him, how_ dare _they do this on our land, on our territory, we will tear them to pieces for this transgression and spit on their flayed corpses._

“How sweet,” one of the hunters says, stepping forward as he speaks. There’s a crossbow in his hand, a hunting knife on his hip. Blood on his knuckles and hand. “Look, _mutt_ , your prince charming is here, all by his lonesome self. A human too, from the looks of it. How tragic.”

 _You see what they call him?_ Stiles’s magic bristles. _You see what they’ve done to him? We can hurt them, we can hurt them so easily, just –_

“What do you want? What have you done to him?” His hands are curled into tight fists, nails digging into his palm.

A woman pushes through the group, shotgun in hand, sneer on her face. “You’re the sheriff’s boy,” she says. “You’re the one Colin took.”

The first hunter speaks. “Oh, how _precious._ A human come to save his pet dog, and a crippled one at that. How _foolish.”_  

His magic is roaring in his ears now, straining against the bonds of his willpower. “What do you want?” Stiles repeats, spitting the words out from behind gritted teeth.

“Oh, honey,” the woman speaks. “It’s not about you, or about anything material that we _want._ We’re just here to rid the world of filth like these.” Her hand snaps out, knuckles catching Derek hard in the jaw. It’s testament to how weak Derek must be that he goes down easily, barely a muffled protest or growl to be heard.

“That was a very bad idea,” Stiles warns, the magic in him standing to attention, carrion birds before flight.

“Now, now,” she says, “It’s very cute of you to be so loyal, but little boys like you _don’t_ want to mess with us. As it is, we can’t let you leave alive, but don’t make this any harder for yourself.”

“I think,” he says, “That I’m not the one who should be running here.” Stiles hears his words faintly, his power a surging throb in his ears. “This is Beacon Hills. This is the territory of the Hales, this is _my_ territory. I’m going to ask you to leave while you still can.”

“Oh no, whatever shall we do,” the hunter mocks, words sing-song. “What are you going to do about it?”

 Stiles fingers have been subconsciously tracing runes along the sides of his thighs, runes for spells he’s never heard of but _knows_ , on an instinctual level, what havoc they will wreak. Complex sequences of _kill/maim/hurt/pain/shred_ are etched onto the fabric of his jeans, fingers dancing. 

He bends, placing his palm flat on the earth. He’s strangely dissociated now, his words echoing back to him, muffled and muted. Stiles looks back up, straight at the hunter.

“Only this.”

He closes his eyes, breathing slowly. _Destroy,_ he commands.

Utter silence for a brief moment, the forest and nature silenced by his will.

A heartbeat. A breath. 

_Kill them all._

All hell breaks loose.

 

 

_____

 

 

No. No, that’s not right either.

We’re losing track of this, the threads of the fabric of our story unraveling too fast to follow. I’m sorry. He’s –

This is hard for Stiles.

You’ve been following well, though, good for you. Just hang on for a little more. Bear with him, the order’s all muddled up now, some days he can’t –

Yes, he’s got it.

We have to go back to the beginning now. You remember that one? Non-contextual, out of order? That one.

Right. Here we go.

 

_____

 

 

“I love you,” he says. Profoundly stupid.

This is before. It’s also after, the way that all things are both before and after. He – he’s not making sense, is he?

Just – _shhh. Shhh_. He can handle this, his narrative isn’t falling apart.

Listen. _Listen._ The wind in the trees, the quiet thump of a heartbeat, the whisper of the forest on balmy Californian days.

“I love you,” he says. 

Derek doesn’t.

There are emotions he could describe, purple prose he could insert to tell you everything that happens in between. But why?

“I love you,” he’d said, and Derek hadn’t.

Those are the only two things that matter.

 _Wait,_ you say. _When? How?_

Before the hunters come back, after one of the many times they fuck. The night before Derek is taken.

How?

Only because Stiles panics, and figures he has nothing to lose, and what’s one more ember in an inferno? _I love you._ It’s just three words.

_(Three, three, three – it’s such a nice, round number, isn’t it?)_

Ah, you think. So there was no genuine feeling behind it.

That’s not true. You can say something you aren’t sure of and still feel with every fibre of your being.

I

Love

You 

_(One, two, three.)_

 

_____

 

 

“I don’t need to be _saved,”_ he spits, like the words are poison on his tongue.

And that’s it, that’s what this has come down to, more important than the sum of all things.

 

 

_____

 

 

No, no, no.

This isn’t it. This isn’t it at all.

This comes after.

 _After?_ You ask, clearly bewildered. What is it with all this _after_ and _before?_ Where are you writing from? You must be writing from _after_ , because only then can you know how everything pans out, how the cards fall. 

Well, that’s not true, is it? When you live a memory, when you call one to the forefront of your mind, do you think in _was_ and _had been_ and _then?_ No. No, you don’t. You think – you experience it – in the present.

You’re with him now, aren’t you? You’re following?

We need to hurry, we don’t have much time.

 

 

_____

 

 

Sometimes he thinks Derek knows what’s going on.

He doesn’t protest or question or bat an eyelash when Stiles gets vicious during sex, nails raking and teeth scraping layers off skin that never stops healing.

There’s once that –

Once, Stiles shoves Derek back on the bed, straddling his hips, fucking himself down on Derek’s cock, nails scoring lines that trace the topography of Derek’s chest, along starkly defined muscle and protruding bone. He makes Derek _bleed,_ magic singing beneath his skin, blood smearing and mixing with sweat and bodily fluids and catching under his fingernails. 

_(There’s a certain beauty to pain, the exquisite sting of salt straight from your veins, the tang of iron sharp in the shivering air.)_

Derek lets him, tensing and coiling under his hands, teeth gritted and eyes flashing red, but he never once asks Stiles to stop.

(And even if he had, Stiles isn’t sure he _could_ have _,_ and that –

That _terrifies_ him.)

 

_____

 

 

When he comes to, he’s flat on the ground, back on the hard earth. It’s still dark out, the stars blinking from behind a thin cover of clouds. 

Stiles sits up. The dirt beneath his palms is red, strangely. Damp and soaked in mottled, rusty red, carmine that looks oddly like – 

No. _No._  

He looks around wildly. Derek is still bound, face pale from wolfsbane poisoning. Stiles heads straight for him, magic tugging off his binds and ripping off his gag with a mere thought. 

 _Heal,_ he orders, and his magic complies, jumping from his hands placed on Derek’s chest and into his body, flushing out all traces of the plant. A black, tar-like substance is yanked from Derek’s body, dismissed by Stiles with a glance, falling to the forest floor, seeping through the dirt. 

“ _Stiles,”_ Derek breathes the minute he’s able to, pallor returning to his cheeks. “Jesus _Christ,_ Stiles.”

“Wha –” He looks around. Breath resurrects and dies in his throat, caught and choked between horror and disbelief.

“Oh my god,” he whispers.

 

 

_____

 

 

There are many ways to describe what Stiles saw. Adjectives he could use to paint a picture, verbs he could utilise to show you with action.

Perhaps it would be easier to tell you the reactions of the others. Sometimes it’s more revealing to look at those around us, rather than directly into the glare of the lens of the situation. 

Scott throws up into the bushes, hand shaking. 

Allison looks at Stiles as if he’s a stranger, her face ashen and pale.

Jackson’s lip is curled in disgust, but there’s a dawning light of horror in his eyes.

Erica backs away, her hand in Boyd’s to tug him with her.

Isaac’s looking directly at him, mouth gaping soundlessly, eyes screaming of betrayal.

Derek –

Derek looks at him like he’s an _abomination._

 

 

_____

 

 

There’s a saying, though.

_The Devil’s in the details._

So maybe Stiles lied. He’s going to tell you what he saw.

He saw –

Bodies, excoriated and pink and red, strips of skin dangling from the branches of blackened trees.

Faces, grinning in perpetuation, lipless and eyeless and jaws unhinged, mouths open in forever screams.

Hearts, ripped from breathing bodies, lined up in a neat row ten feet from Derek, like a gift, like holy offerings –

Like raw _power_.

 

 

_____

 

 

Let’s go back to those three words now. You remember them?

_(I love you.)_

Stiles has told you two versions so far, each one different from the other.

Which one is true?

Both are.

Truth is relative. Every person’s version of events is the truth, shrouded in bias and perspective and tainted with personal opinion. In a sense, no one ever lies.

(This is what Derek saw, what Derek felt, what Stiles doesn’t know: he’d seen the way Stiles had forced the words out, proclamation edged in mounting desperation; he’d heard the way Stiles’s voice had hitched and choked on the ends of each word, terrified and uncertain; he’d felt the way Stiles hadn’t quite meant what he’d said.

Just because you say _I love you_ with every ounce of belief doesn’t mean you quite mean it.

And Derek had looked at Stiles then, in that singular, eternal moment, and had seen a frantic, scared teenager – he’d seen _himself,_ all of fifteen and quivering for approval, for desire, for _love_ , and the comparison had made him shudder, because that is a path no one should have to walk down.

He’d wanted Stiles to be certain, to be irrevocably sure, to love like fresh bruises pressed carefully into worshipped skin, raw and visceral and _real._

He’d wanted to say it back.)

Stiles only sees Derek’s aloofness, his abrasiveness and frigid silence, his physicality and mercurial moods. Derek does not love him. Stiles believes this, beyond all measure of doubt. This fits in the worldview he has framed for himself; this is undeniable fact that slots cleanly into the outlook he has adopted. 

This is easier, you see, than believing the quandary they find themselves in is partly of his own making.

(This is easier than believing he’d used three little words as a false tether, a _lie.)_

 

 

_____

 

 

 

Deaton is the first to realize that something is wrong.

Stiles still drops by the clinic to visit him once a week, lugging ancient tomes back and forth. It’s a routine they have down pat by now, Stiles returning books and borrowing others, Deaton giving him a cursory check.

“Ah,” he says, setting down a vial of some smoky liquid when Stiles walks in. “Good to see you, Stiles. How are you today?”

It’s the day after Stiles dumps his first Ziploc bag of dead birds swept from his sill, their tiny bodies charred and gutted. He smiles, as real and genuine as he can make it.

“I’m fine,” he replies. “Thanks. Good to go with the new batch of spells.”

Deaton hums in assent, accepting the books that Stiles draws out from his bag to return to him. He sets them down on an examination table, one hand coming to rest on the new stack that Stiles had meant to swing by to pick up. 

He tuts, fingers tapping twice on the pile of fresh books before stopping. “You look tired, Stiles,” he says. “Let’s give your magic a rest this week, how does that sound?”

There’s something in the way Deaton drops the line so casually, the way his eyes settle and flit.

“Sure,” Stiles nods, wiping his damp palms on the front of his jeans, taking a step backwards. “Sounds like a plan, my man.”

He leaves, driving back to his house before changing his mind one street away and heading to Derek’s place instead. Derek’s there to greet him at the door when he arrives, eyes searching. Stiles knows his heart is rabbiting, knows his hands are cold with sweat.

Derek’s hands come up to rest bracingly on his forearms, but Stiles pushes past them and presses himself up against Derek’s front, sealing his mouth to his. The kiss turns rapidly bruising, wet and biting and toeing the edge of desperation.

Derek gentles his hands on him, leads them up to his bedroom. The sex is good, soft and slow and loving.

Stiles doesn’t think he knows what that means, not anymore. He gathers his clothes when they’re done, fighting to keep his eyes from meeting Derek’s, driving home just after dinnertime. There are voices in the kitchen – no, just one. It’s his dad on the phone.

“A dead cat?” Stiles hears. There’s a pause in the conversation as his dad listens to the person on the other end of the line. “And you’re _sure_ that it couldn’t have been anyone – any _thing_ – else. No natural causes – age, health?” 

His dad sighs, and there’s a clink of a plate being set in the sink. “Yes, I know you _are_ actually a certified vet. It’s just – ” There’s a lull, an obvious shoring up of resolve. “ – _skinned?_ The cat was skinned? No foul play either, that’s – ” 

Stiles heads up the stairs for his room before he can hear more. There’s a growing ball of _something_ at the back of his throat, jostling and churning behind his Adam’s apple, grown out of the shadows twined around his heart and lungs. He stops to wrestle his breathing under control on the landing outside his room, palm resting on the door knob. 

It’s simple. _Inhale._ One, two. _Exhale._ Three, four. 

There’s a cat pelt nailed to his ceiling.

 

 

 

_____

 

 

 

The pack avoids him for two weeks after Derek’s rescue.

 

Or – no. That’s not quite right, is it? Phrasing it that way implies that they caved and let him back into their fold.

 

No. That’s not how the world works, not in real life.

 

Two weeks after Derek’s rescue and zero communication from anyone in the pack, Stiles drives to Scott’s house. He lets himself in, heads straight for Scott’s room, where he can hear the familiar sounds of Scott puttering about.

Scott’s waiting for him when he reaches his door, sitting on the edge of his bed, fingers drumming against a bouncing thigh.

“Hey, man,” he greets when Stiles barges through the door. It’s weird. Scott sounds _off,_ like the words were stuck in his throat and had to be pushed out, _forced_ out.

Stiles stares. “Dude, what the hell?”

He’s seen Scott like this before, all awkward avoidance and uncertainty, but it’s never been directed at _him._

“What the _hell_ is going on?” he repeats, one hand coming up to rake furiously through his hair. “I don’t – the pack – ” Stiles cuts off, pausing to take a deep breath. “Everyone’s been avoiding me. No one’s taking my calls. Can we just _talk_ about this?”

Scott swallows nervously, eyes averted. “We’re not – it’s not a good idea for you to be around us now, Stiles.”

The way Scott phrases that, the way he bit off his sentence, has Stiles narrowing his eyes as it dawns upon him.

“ _Derek,”_ he hisses. “Derek told the pack to stay away from me.”

Scott’s mouth opens to no doubt issue a stream of platitudes and denials, but Stiles sees it now. “Is he _afraid_ that I’ll bring hunters down on your heads? Is that it? Is he worried that Stiles, little old _Stiles_ , will lose control and cause a mess for him? Huh? Does he really think that – ”

“Stiles,” Scott calls, voice alarmed. Stiles ignores it, turning a seething gaze to the window.

He’s choking on his anger now, all impotent, bottled rage that catches on the grinding edges of his teeth and blanks his mind in livid reds. When he turns back to face Scott, it’s clear his anger shows.

 “Stiles,” Scott emphatically placates, standing, arms extended in front of his in the universal gesture of pacification. “It’s not that,” Scott picks up, “You’re getting this all wrong, that’s not how it is at all.” 

“Oh yeah?” Stiles retorts, whirling to face him head on. The magic in him is boiling over, a furious bubbling in his blood that sings of power and _oh, how easy it would be for us to crush this little werewolf, to put him in his place, how simple it would be for us to bring him to his knees._

“Yeah?” Stiles continues, advancing on Scott. The tiny part of his brain that is still rational rails and screams, battling furiously against the confines of the power surging through him. _What are we doing,_ it screams. _What the fuck are we doing?_

He ignores it, shutting the voice away. “Do you think I’m _stupid?_ Do you think I can’t see how the pack draws away and winces when I so much as enter the same _room?_ Do you believe I’m oblivious enough to think that this, this _radio silence_ , is a _coincidence?”_

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Erh, apologies for the unintentionally cliff-hanger ending, whoops. 
> 
> You can follow me on [Tumblr](http://astoryaboutwar.tumblr.com).


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